A numerical study on the determination of the effects of pore to throat size ratio on the thermal dispersion in porous media

Abstract

Direct pore-level numerical simulations are widely used to estimate macroscopic properties of fluid flow and heat transfer in porous media. Thermal dispersion is one of the most important macroscopic transport parameters for analyzing convective heat transfer in a porous medium. It should be known in order to predict the macroscopic temperature distribution. In the present study, a microscopic scale analysis is performed for a porous medium with periodic structure. A representative elementary volume is chosen from an infinite medium consists of rectangular rods in inline arrangement. The continuity and momentum equations are solved to obtain flow field and the energy equations for fluid and solid phases are solved to obtain microscopic temperature distributions in two phases. There are velocity and temperature deviations between macroscopic and microscopic local values. Volume averaging method is applied to the computed deviations and thermal dispersion conductivity of porous media is determined. The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of pore to throat size ratio on the longitudinal and transverse thermal dispersion in porous media. The study is performed for representative elementary volumes with different pore to throat size ratios and Reynolds numbers from 1 to 100. The study is performed for high porosity porous media (ε = 0.7 and 0.91). It is shown that the porosity and pore to throat size ratio have more influence on the transverse rather than longitudinal thermal dispersion. © 2014, Begell House Inc. All rights reserved.